Bears give students wildlife lesson

Persimmons draw sow, 2 cubs to tree outside Hendersonville High

Three bears spotted in a tree at Hendersonville High School Thursday morning have left the campus.

Patrick Sullivan / Times-News

By NANCY TANKERTimes-News Staff Writer

Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, October 10, 2013 at 9:44 a.m.

Students at Hendersonville High were kept away from the front of the building for several hours Thursday morning to allow a mother bear and her two cubs in a persimmon tree near the front of the school time to climb down and retreat.

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Officers from the state Wildlife Resources Commission and Hendersonville Police Department blocked a portion of Oakland Street, which intersects Bearcat Boulevard, and cordoned off a parking lot to keep people away from the bears.

Principal Bobby Wilkins said staff members noticed a couple of trash cans overturned when they arrived at the school Thursday morning. Soon after, a few students saw the bears in the tree.

Wildlife officers recommended that the bears be left undisturbed so they could come down from the tree and leave the property of their own accord.

The persimmon tree likely attracted the bears, said Wildlife Officer Aaron Stronach, because recent rains have damaged the acorn crop on which they normally feed.

The school cafeteria is near the tree, and school officials had students take a circuitous route to pick up their lunches, then travel to the high school stadium to eat, in order to stay away from the black bears.

Though the bears seemed unfazed by the students' presence, the teenagers' interest in the bears kept them from focusing on their lessons in many of the classrooms overlooking the tree.

“I blame this on the government shutdown,” quipped senior Joy Hagstrom. “They've probably been locked out of the forest, so they came here.”

Hagstrom was in art teacher Courtney Hoelscher's classroom, where she and a dozen other students huddled around the windows just outside the tree where the bears were feeding on persimmon fruit.

“Come on everybody, let's sketch the bears!” Hoelscher suggested. Nobody moved from the windows.

Staring up into the tree, senior Robin Kelsey, who recently moved here from Texas, said he was “going to tell my friends from Texas” about the bears, “but they wouldn't believe me. I've never seen a bear in Texas.”

At that moment, Principal Wilkins stepped into the classroom to urge the students to keep their voices low and tell them about the day's amended lunch routine.

“We can't be near these guys, because if there's any noise, they won't want to come down,” he said. He instructed the students where they could go and where they couldn't, including the parking areas around Oakland.

Two seconds after Wilkins left, the students returned to the windows, transfixed by the sight of the cubs and their mother.

Jensen Broadhurt, a freshman, said she's seen bears in her neighborhood near West Henderson High, but hadn't seen them so close before. As she watched a cub reach out for a persimmon, she blurted out, “If he falls, I think I'm going to cry.”

After a few hours, the bears climbed down from the tree and made their way south toward U.S. 25, with police and wildlife officials tracking their movements.

The activity attracted a half-dozen onlookers, including Hendersonville Elementary Guidance Counselor Martha Sloan, who was in touch with school officials just blocks away, trying to ascertain if there was a bear threat to the children who might walk home from school.

Hendersonville resident Scott Bowling also watched the procession. A friend of his had told him about a momma bear and two cubs wandering around Long John Mountain the night before. He surmised that they were the same bears. He suggested the bears might be heading back home, but would have to cross Fleming Street first.

“After they cross a few streets, there's an 'animal corridor' that runs along a stream that they can follow to get back to Long John Mountain,” he said. “But first they need to cross Fleming.”

As if on cue, the bears emerged just south of Ninth Street and Fleming Street, just as Hendersonville High Resource Officer Curtis Philon arrived. Philon stopped traffic traveling north, while an unknown good Samaritan stopped traffic heading south. With Fleming Street clear of traffic, the three bears slowly walked across the street into a wooded area, heading to Long John Mountain just like Bowling had predicted.

Since the three were traveling in the direction of Hendersonville Elementary, the school sent out a schoolwide phone alert to tell parents the bears were in the area, but not on campus. School officials wanted to let parents who walk their children home from school to be aware of the situation and keep an eye out.

Reach Tanker at 828-694-7871 or nancy.tanker@blueridgenow.com.

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